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to be propitiated, and that the complex symbolic actions used were superposed. For of the judges, who "sat only on days fixed by the secret calendar of the pontiffs," it is said that "they did not admit the litigants to set forth simply the matters in dispute; mysterious formulæ, gestures, and actions were necessary." In further evidence of this priestly character of the judicial administration is the following statement of Professor W. A. Hunter:—

"Pomponius, in his brief account of the history of Roman Law, informs us that the custody of the XII Tables, the exclusive knowledge of the forms of procedure (legis actiones), and the right of interpreting the law, belonged to the College of Pontiffs."

And Mommsen tells us in other words the same thing.

But while we here see, as we saw in the cases of other early peoples, that the priest, intimately acquainted with the injunctions of the god, and able to get further intimations of his will, consequently became the fountain of law, and therefore the judge respecting breaches of law, we do not find evidence that in ancient Rome, any more than in Greece, Egypt, or Palestine, the advocate was of priestly origin. Contrariwise we find evidence that among these early civilized peoples, as at the present time among some peoples who have become civilized enough to have legal procedures, the advocate is of lay origin. Marsden says that in Sumatra—

"the plaintiff and defendant usually plead their own cause, but if circumstances render them unequal to it, they are allowed to pinjam mulut (borrow a mouth). Their advocate may be a proattin, or other person indifferently; nor is there any stated compensation for the assistance, though if the cause be gained, a gratuity is generally given."

So, too, from Parkyns we learn that the Abyssinians have a sort of lawyers—merely "an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift of the gab. These men are sometimes employed by the disputants in serious cases, but not invariably." Indeed, it must everywhere have happened in early stages when litigants usually stated their respective cases, that sometimes one or other of them asked a friend to state his case for him; and a spokesman who became noted for skill in doing this would be employed by others, and eventually a present to him would become a fee. It was thus among the Romans. After knowledge of the Twelve Tables had been diffused, and after the secrets of legal procedure had been disclosed by a secretary of Appius Claudius, there grew up a class of men, the jurisconsulti, learned in the law, who gave their advice, and also, later, advocates distinguished by their oratorical powers, who, as among ourselves, were furnished with materials and suggestions by lawyers of lower grade.

 

The superposing of civilizations and of religions throughout Northern Europe after Roman days, complicated the relations